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White lawn grubs are the larvae of various beetles, including the Japanese beetle and the green June beetle. They are plump and C-shaped. White grubs also have brown heads and three pairs of legs. Such grubs do damage to lawns by feeding on grass roots, which causes the grass to wilt and die. Determine whether your lawn is suffering from grub infestation as opposed to another issue before using chemicals or other means of control.

1

Observe your lawn. If the turf is wilting and features irregular brown patches, it is possible that you have grubs. While lawns can wilt and brown for other reasons, such as extremely dry, hot weather, a wilted, browning lawn can certainly indicate grub activity. Also look for spots that appear to have been dug up, because assorted animals might be digging through your lawn to get to the grubs.

2

Pull up with your hands a section of the lawn where you think you might find grubs. Use a trowel or spade if necessary to remove a decent chunk of lawn from the ground, and wear gloves to avoid potentially touching the grubs with bare skin. Look at the ground where you have pulled up the sod to see whether there are any white grubs in C-shaped positions. The browning of a lawn from larvae damage typically occurs when there are at least 10 grubs per square foot of sod.

3

Continue pulling up chunks of lawn by hand until you have uncovered every area of your lawn you believe is contaminated with grubs. A thorough inspection helps you determine what control methods you should employ.

Things You Will Need

Garden trowel

Garden spade

Garden gloves

Tips

Allow the lawn to remain dormant to dry out and kill the grubs, which require moist soil to reproduce and thrive. This results in an overall brown lawn, but the grub issue should resolve itself. If you live in an area that receives heavy rainfall year-round or during the summer, this may not be the best option for grub removal.

Insecticides such as halofenozide or imidacloprid can be used mid- to late summer on lawns suspected of having grubs. Use such insecticides the year after you notice grubs in your lawn; they must be used as pretreatment before lawn damage is evident to be effective.

About the Author

Kent Page McGroarty has worked as a writer since 2006, contributing numerous articles to various websites. She is a frequent contributor to the health and fitness sections of the online magazine EDGE Publications and holds a Bachelor of Arts in English from Saint Joseph's University.